Before I go on to deal with the Vote on Account, I want to give one quotation to show the futility of discussions in this House between two groups who have had responsibility for Government, two groups who do not differ fundamentally in their outlook with regard to Government. This quotation is from the debate on the Vote on Account on 15th March, 1956, Volume 155, column 624:—
"There is not any evidence of any great change in policy in any Department, but the overall picture is one of administrative costs mounting out of control. There is no evidence of any efforts being made by the Government to deal with that situation or to apply to themselves the exhortations which they are addressing to the public."
This is the priceless part:—
"I suppose the only possible solution of this problem is to get rid of this Government. That will come sooner or later."
That quotation could have been made by any member of the present Front Bench when in Opposition or by any member of the present Opposition Front Bench. However, that quotation was made by none other than the Tánaiste.
If we examine the figures of expenditure since 1956, in a period when Fianna Fáil had two years with the greatest majority they ever had in this House, we find that the expenditure of a non-essential type has mounted each year in spite of the control they wielded. The argument of the Tánaiste in 1956, to the then inter-Party Government was to this effect: "You are not able to control the situation. There is only one way to deal with this situation and that is to get out this Government." Have we not the same position to-day? Is there any change with regard to the control being exercised by this Government on mounting expenditure? Have they shown any more power of control than the people they ousted from office?
To go back to what I said last night. Many Deputies are beginning to realise that power to control the destiny of the Irish people, power to control employment, the cost of living and the right to live in this State, lies outside this House. Every day, inside this House, efforts are being made to smother and to stifle justifiable criticism, even though this House can now be described only as a rubber stamp for passing legislation and as a talking shop. Efforts are being made by this Government to destroy even that limited function of discussing business in this House and I shall give evidence to that effect in the course of my remarks.
In my opinion, the people at the present time have either contempt for politicians or they are cynical towards public life. Can they be blamed? In the past few years especially, we have had a surfeit of promises. We have had blueprints; we have had grey papers and we have had White Papers. From the various Ministers each week, we have had announcements of great things to come as a result of discussions between interested groups within the country. Even on the Vote on Account, the Minister in his opening remarks said that he and his Department were having discussions with various groups in the country—the bacon industry, farmers' associations, business groups and so forth—on how increased production can be achieved and how to ensure that more employment will be given all over the country.
Those blueprints, White Papers, grey papers and consultations, have made the public fed up. What they want now is action, and I am afraid they are not going to get the action. I am afraid they are not going to get action because if action has to be taken, the very people who support politicians in this House will have to be stamped upon, people outside this House who exercise control and use Cabinet Ministers as puppets. Those people and their vested interests will have to be brought under control and there is no individual on the Front Bench of this Government who is prepared to sacrifice his personal interest, or his company interest, for the public good.
I have said that the power is now going outside the House. Let me give a few examples. For some time past, there has been a committee functioning on the question of the marketing of agricultural produce and a sub-committee was set up to deal with another most important means of livelihood of the small farmers in the West of Ireland, namely the pigs and bacon industry. They sat for a considerable period and made a report to the Government. I asked the Minister, in this House, if he would tell us what the report was and if the Government would implement the report. The Minister—it was the Minister for Agriculture—in his usual fashion said the Government had the report under consideration. In his opening speech yesterday, the Minister for Finance said that consultations were going on for the purpose of modernising the bacon factories. Let us be clear on that. The report of that committee which discussed and worked out the best means of improving the bacon industry, and preventing the exploitation of the farmers, decided that control would have to be exercised by the State on the pig curers and that the pig industry would best be dealt with on practically the same lines as the sugar company.
Do the Government propose to adopt that approach? I say they will not because they themselves have control, as individuals, of a number of bacon factories and are closely associated with them. Not alone are the members of the Government associated with them, but the back benchers are also associated with them. Then we are told that the interests of the small farmers will be looked after by this Government. The pig industry is on the way down again. It is subject to fluctuations year after year. There is no long-term policy for it. The producer is at the mercy of the middle-man in this matter. I do not for a moment think that there are not big difficulties with regard to marketing and exporting, but we are not even dealing with that aspect.
We have a serious problem in regard to production. There is a feeling of dissatisfaction and distrust on the part of the producer himself because he knows he is being exploited. If prices are to go down, the man who will lose is not the middle-man, or the retailer, but the man at the bottom, the producer. Strong action is needed to put that industry on its feet, strong action on a wide basis to ensure that the interests of the producer, and the small farmer, are looked after. Will we get that strong action from the Government when members of the Government are closely associated with the industry, not as producers, but as middle-men, up along the line?
Again I say that power now lies outside this House. Since I came into this House, I have read the various reports of the Central Bank and I have taken time off each year to read the speeches of the bosses of the various commercial banks. Every year, we have had this wailing and moaning and groaning that too much money was being spent and that there was always a constant danger of inflation. The Central Bank, acting as a kind of mouthpiece for the commercial banks, kept up this whining every year. The result was that they frightened the Government into taking action to prevent so much money being circulated.
The Taoiseach, as a result of the advice given to him by these banks, decided that he would put the hair-shirt on the Irish people every time he got back into power, and he put that hairshirt on the Irish people every time. As a result of that, the poor people become poorer and the rich became richer; bank deposits went up and external assets went up; bank dividends went up and what happened then? The unemployment figures went up and the figures for emigration went up, as each year these gentlemen, the bosses of the banks, pronounced on the danger to the community of spending money. The fact of the matter is that the Government, in their conservative fashion, accepted the advice of the banks in question. They have no option. The State exercises no control whatever over its monetary policy.
For ten years, we listened to that weeping and wailing about spending. What happened then? Overnight the situation changed, and anybody with an honest face—like any member of this House—could go into the Bank and on his appearance was supposed to be entitled to a loan. Suddenly, the restrictions went by the board as far as certain sections of the agricultural community were concerned. A few years ago, would any Deputy from rural Ireland have said that a small farmer, or any farmer, could walk in and get a loan from the commercial banks? Despite the fact that the commercial banks had on deposit from the farming community three times the amount lent to them, the farmer was not regarded as a sure person to whom to give credit.
However, all that changed overnight; and I should like to know why. I have my own suspicions. I should like to have clarified for me where the pressure came from to change the banking outlook. We know that the British agent and British farmer who depend on the Irish store cattle trade have been worried for the past couple of years in case the Irish programme for the eradication of bovine T.B. should not be completed, and that consequently a large section of the British farming community would be deprived of store cattle from Ireland. A number of commercial banks here with headquarters in Britain have on their controlling authority a number of people closely associated with the British farming community, and we find them offering overnight credit schemes for cattle to the Irish farmers. That move came from Britain. This Government had nothing whatever to do with it. The organisation known as the N.F.A. were, if you like, used, as far as that scheme was concerned.
For the past 100 years, we have maintained that Britain wanted this country purely as a ranch to breed and rear store cattle for Britain. Are we not walking right into that trap? Remember, there are no loans or credit from the commercial banks with headquarters in Britain for the farmer who wants to go into horticulture, tillage, pigs or anything like that; but there is a loan for the farmer who wants to go into grass. Even with the limited tillage and mixed farming we have, the aim is to get into grass to suit the British buyer. I mention this because for the past 25 years, under the direction of the Tánaiste, this Government built up tariff walls for every "chancer", speculator and pal who wanted to make a few quid on some tin-pot industry; but now the tariff walls must go. There is panic in the Fianna Fáil camp and in the camp of their followers who have made well on this position for the past 25 years. The alternative is "back now to the policy of grass". The store cattle trade and grass are to save this country.
I said here last night that a great deal of power now lies outside this House but inside the House efforts are being made by this Government to stifle criticism, to stifle questions on matters of public importance and to deny the airing of the justifiable grievances of the community. All legislation dealing with State or semi-State companies contains the provision that the conduct and working of such companies will not be subject to interference by question or otherwise in this House. I am the first to maintain that State and semi-State companies in this country are outstanding, but the Government are doing a very bad day's work for such concerns by not bringing them to a greater degree under the control of the Oireachtas, so that the public will have some say with regard to the policy and the manner in which the money voted in this House is expended.
It has reached the stage at which the Government, through legislation, have prevented Deputies from raising matters of public importance by question, and now they are seeking to prevent Deputies from raising questions in connection with State companies by way of motion here. Within the past three months, the Government have sought to prevent motions dealing with State companies from appearing on the Order Paper. If they get away with that, what will be the position here?